It was in 1985 that I sat spellbound in Ronnie Scott's at Nina Simone. A musician, songwriter and performer of the most superlative talent, whose cadence, timing, keyboard touch and vocal skills are simply utterly brilliant. I'll remember that gig all my life. She had me, soul and heart, and that's what real art does.
However, this is where the logic of the illiberal left falls. "Nina Simone is Black. Nina Simone is a great artist. Therefore all black people are great artists" is simply a logical fallacy. I've tried and tried, for example, to see any merit in Maya Angelou's dreary words. Agaist Seamus Heaney, Robert Graves or even Larkin her verse is clumsy, ugly, untalented stuff, dross that should never have escaped from some smudgy gestetnered student rag.
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